A fire at an indoor shooting range in Busan on Saturday claimed the lives of 10 people, including eight Japanese tourists. Six of the tourists were former junior high school classmates from a village in Nagasaki prefecture, who arrived in Busan by ferry that morning for a two-day visit. Over the past nine years they had been saving their money and making trips together every two or three years.

The former classmates met a terrible fate on their first overseas trip together. Words cannot describe the sorrow their wives and children must be feeling right now. Koreans are appalled by the lack of safety measures in other countries whenever such tragic accidents happen to Korean tourists overseas. The Japanese public probably feels the same way about Korea.

It is frustrating to see the continuation of tragedies caused by poor safety measures in Korea. There have been eight major fatal fires since 2000, including one at a mental hospital in November of 2000 that killed eight people, another at a private crammer in Gwangju that killed eight in 2001, and a blaze at a bar in Gunsan in 2002 that left 12 dead. In 2003 a fire set by an arsonist inside a subway train in Daegu killed 192 people, while a blaze in a mental hospital in South Chungcheong Province in 2006 left five dead. In 2007, nine foreigners who had entered Korea illegally were killed in their holding cells when a fire broke out at an immigration office in South Jeolla Province. And in January and December of 2008, 47 people were killed after fires burned two cold-storage facilities in Gyeonggi Province. The locations and types of fires may be different, but they were all caused by the same reason: a lax attitude toward safety regulations designed to protect human lives.

The latest tragedy occurred at a shooting range that was located on the second floor of a five-story building. People could have jumped out of the windows and survived, but anti-theft steel bars on the windows trapped the victims inside and thick sound-proofing materials prevented smoke from flowing out. Nevertheless, the structure passed a fire safety inspection conducted on Nov. 6. In April of 2006, a fire at a shooting range in Seoul killed one worker and injured seven, including three Japanese tourists. Less than four years later we have a far greater tragedy in another shooting range.

In 2003, fire authorities in Tokyo assigned 17 experts to compile a report on the Daegu subway fire. They spent a year working on the investigation, which prompted changes such as expanding the number of fire escapes in Tokyo's subway stations from one to two and using non-flammable building materials. A country does not enter the ranks of the world's advanced nations simply because it hosts international events like the G20 Summit. A truly advanced country is one that values human lives and works to eliminate threats to those lives.